Chapter 6: Public Reaction

Page 1

Chapter 6: Public Reaction

Claims often reach the public through media.

Claims makers use feedback from the public- modify claims (persuasion), better devise news/entertainment to capture attention.

Policymakers in turn respond to the public.

Measuring Public Opinion

Impact of Polling Methods

Public Opinion Polls ---How methods of polling can affect a survey's result?

Sample surveys approaches a sample of people within a population.

Representative Sample: Sample not selected in ways that make it more likely that some sorts of people will be chosen than others.

Difficult and expensive to design perfectly representative samples.

Survey results are sensitive to many other influences.

Wording of the question---Polls ask questions worded in ways that encourage results that sponsors favor.

Surveys usually distill complex issues into one/two questions---result is crude and oversimplified.

Answering a survey is a social situation---respondents wants to make a good impression and agree with issues they have no knowledge about.